Utah sponsors employee travel to Mexico to buy medicines in cheap | Hacker News Reader

Utah sponsors employee travel to Mexico to buy medicines in cheap

abcnews.go.com

26 pointsseshagiric10 comments

This seems ridiculous. If a state wants to do something like this, can't they just import the medicines directly? After all, if any regulation restricts it, the state should have the power to correct that regulation.

This would constitute interstate commerce which is explicitly mentioned in the US constitution as a power reserved to the Federal government. If Utah wanted to manufacture Utah only non-patented pharmaceuticals then they could escape that regulation. However importing across state lines is within the jurisdiction of the Federal government.

Disgusting that the America govt does nothing while every other major power is able to get prescription drug prices under control.

The Utah government _is_ doing something. It's right in the article.

And for the rest: part of the problem is that the government is doing stuff, instead of getting out of the way..

American government does more than anyone else. They provide the system with fuel by providing a sufficiently large base of price-insensitive customers that reasonable numbers don't have to be used for drug prices.

Wrong.

Health "Insurance" abstracts these costs away, and works as a very effective method of locking in those inflated costs with no consumer backlash, because many don't connect the dots, and the ones who do feel they have no other option.

It's a racket, acknowledge it.

Even worse, health insurance has an incentive to increase costs because of the 80/20 rule. If the 80% costs go up, so does the 20% profits they are allowed to keep.

You're not disagreeing with me.

> There, an escort picks her up and takes her across the border to a Tijuana hospital [...]

I wouldn't phrase that this way...

Slightly off topic, how do companies find pharmaceutical companies in Mexico that have what they need? I would like to be a "proper prepper", which is easy to do for all things except BP medication. Pharmacies won't be available if society is ever put on hold and pharmacies won't sell me a case or crate. Would I need to become a lab or start a pharmacy myself?

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